State vs private – please stop the stereotyping!

Recently, my family has made me endure two television documentaries – Educating Yorkshire and Harrow.

Both now having come to an end, these two contrasting series about secondary school life were, for any teacher, “buttock-clenching”, as we watched the all too familiar trials and tribulations of daily school life emerging.

I fear that society has a stereotypical and simplistic view of education that is doing those of us who work in the state sector no favours.

Taken together, the programmes contrived to give the false simplistic message: private school good, state school bad.

Harrow: A Very British School took a gentle, whimsical look at the traditions of this elite, £30,000-a-year, all-boys public school with numerous references to famous alumni, including former prime minister Sir Winston Churchill and actor Benedict Cumberbatch.